October
06, 2006
Musharraf
Pulls No Punches in His Memoir
By Syed Arif Hussaini
Pervez Musharraf’s
memoir “In the Line of Fire” launched
on September 25, 2006, has within a couple of days
made the list of the top ten best sellers in the
U.S. Booksellers in India too have sold out thousands
of copies supplied to them by the publishers, Simon
and Schuster. The opposition parties in Pakistan
have unleashed a campaign against the book and its
author but that has only excited the interest of
the reading public in the contents. It is being
currently translated into different world languages.
When the total number of copies of various versions
of the book is computed, it may turn out to be the
most widely sold and read book by any Pakistani.
Here in the U.S., the release of the book was cleverly
synchronized with the visit of President Musharraf
to the UN and his meetings with President Bush.
In his media interviews before the release of the
book, he talked of the threat given by the Deputy
Secretary of State, Mr. Armitage, directly after
9/11 that Pakistan would be bombed back to stone
age unless it sided with the US in its war on terror.
This provocative statement initiated considerable
interest in the book.
Even for a close student of Pakistan affairs, the
337-page text carries a lot of interesting fresh
information. Unlike President Ayub’s book
“Friends Not Masters”, which was ghost
written, Musharraf’s memoir appears to have
been written by himself. It bears his hallmark of
simple and forthright style and his distinctive
way of calling a spade a spade.
It is relevant to point out here that discipline
and obedience are inculcated into the psyche of
a young man once he enters into the armed forces.
Musharraf cites several instances where he could
not accept wrong orders. He admits: “My seniors
recognized me as a an exceptional leader, but also
as bluntly outspoken, ill disciplined officer. I
was given a number of punishments on different occasions
for fighting, insubordination, and lack of discipline…but
never for any lapse of character or for moral turpitude.”
No wonder, he pulls no punches in criticizing wrong
decisions and the incompetence or self-serving motives
of several policy makers.
About Z.A. Bhutto, he writes: “He was really
a fascist -using the most progressive rhetoric to
promote regressive ends, the first of which was
to stay in power for ever…By the time his
regime ended, I had come to the conclusion that
Bhutto was the worst thing that had yet happened
to Pakistan.”
I must add here a footnote. Mr. Bhutto was no doubt
a feudal autocrat, but there is no denying the fact
that he developed friendly relations with both China
and the Soviet Union, was instrumental in the demarcation
of the Pak-China boundary, the construction of the
Karakoram Highway, the Steel Mills, the Heavy Mechanical
Complex, the nuclear power plant, and the country’s
nuclear program.
Virtually bypassing the 12-year dictatorial regime
of Gen. Zia, Musharraf allots an entire chapter
to the two stints each of Benazir and Nawaz Sharif.
He calls this “The Dreadful Decade of Democracy”.
During this period, writes Musharraf, “Whenever
there was acrimony between the President and the
Prime Minister, which was more often than not, the
army chief would be sucked into the fray. …
Never in the history of Pakistan had we seen such
a combination of the worst kind of governance”.
While Musharraf presents the Kargil operations “as
a landmark in the history of the Pakistan army”
and has accused Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “of
total lack of statesmanship” and of guts,
world opinion has viewed the episode as a fiasco.
Indian media have strongly denigrated Mushrraf’s
claims in favor of the operation.
Musharraf blames Nawaz Sharif for the debacle. “It
was in dealing with Kargil” he writes “that
the Prime Minister exposed his mediocrity and set
himself on a collision course with the army and
me”.
He had earlier mentioned that he had never seen
Nawaz read or write anything. He and his brother
Shahbaz “behaved more like courtiers than
sons” in the presence of their father -Abbaji-
“who was the real decision maker in the family”.
Although Nawaz was a city boy, writes Musharraf,
“his mental makeup was largely feudal -he
mistook dissent for disloyalty”.
Musharraf has devoted four chapters to narrate the
events of his dismissal while he was on the plane
bringing him back from a visit to Sri Lanka, and
the counter-coup by the army. This portion of the
book reads like a thriller. Salient features of
the episode are well known. But, the precise and
well-coordinated moves of various units of the army
make one wonder whether the army had really “been
caught unawares” as contended by Musharraf.
When he assumed the reins of power “Pakistan
was like a rudderless ship floundering in high seas,
with no destination, led by inept captains whose
only talent lay in plunder.” A small elite
“never democratic, often autocratic, usually
plutocratic, and lately kleptocratic –all
working with a tribal-feudal mind-set” was
running the country, under a democratic camouflage.
The main political parties were no more than family
cults with a “dynastic icon at their head”.
The ruling party (PML-Q) failed to deal with the
PPP “for the sole reason that Benazir Bhutto
would not countenance anyone else from her party
becoming prime minister. She treats the party and
the office like a family property”.
The religious group, the MMA, is generally thought
to be hand in glove with the army. But, Musharraf
found the MMA “anything but straight. Its
members tended to be devious in the extreme, changing
their stance regularly”.
Almost a third of the book gives details of the
operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The
disclosures belie Afghan leadership’s contention
that Pakistan was not doing enough to counter the
terrorist menace. This charge makes no sense after
reading the accounts of the assassination attempts
on Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz and the fact that
Pakistan has deployed some 80,000 troops in anti-terrorist
operations and has set up 900 military posts along
the border with Afghanistan.
Musharraf calls the Afghan charge as “malicious
propaganda” calculated to divert attention
from their own failures, particularly as the writ
of Karzai regime does not extends beyond Kabul.
He has repeatedly criticized the folly of the US
government in abandoning Afghanistan and Pakistan
soon after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops.
He attributes the emergence of Taliban and Al Qaeda
to this shortsighted policy. He has similarly castigated
the American invasion of Iraq. A highly expensive
project, it has been counter-productive in that
it has given a fillip to terrorism.
The West and the US in particular are, he contends,
dealing with the symptoms, not the root causes of
terrorism. Ultimate success, he maintains, “will
come only when the roots that cause terrorism are
destroyed: that is, when injustices against Muslims
are removed. This lies in the hands of the West,
particularly America.” He has also accused
the West for making no distinction between terrorism
and freedom struggles such as the one in Kashmir.
Musharraf’s book, like Hillary Clinton’s
autobiography ‘Living History’, appears
to have been launched as a prelude to his bid for
election scheduled for next year. The welcome it
has received at home and abroad has sent jitters
among his political opponents in Pakistan and they
are trying to create a rumpus over it in the country.
The more dust they raise, the more readers the book
will attract.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com October 1, 2006
